In Silent Water

"So much lost."

"Yes, that is true, my friend. But only because they were given so much. But we have other worlds to see now. Let us begin again."

You turn and look at the world below you, a world once green and blue, a world once rich with life. Points of light circle the world, information floods the consciousness of the people there, but they can not hear, can not see. They are always looking inside themselves, dissolving their connection to life.

"I will never understand them."

"Yes, my friend. But your time in that world has come and gone. It is in the past. Come now."

You take her hand, and resume your journey through the stars. You are happy to be back with her. But you are changed. Something of the human has touched your soul. You wonder what happened to your son, to your grandson. To the woman you loved there. It is a bitter feeling. To love as humans do. With so many conditions attached to life, love loses it's intensity. And with the end of life always the reward for your journey, there is so much to fear.

You think back on your time there. Of flying through clouds in great machines, of holding the hand of the woman you loved while your child struggled to find it's way into the light. You think of the boy you held in your arms when he was so small, and the boy he soon held in his hands. Of your circle in the water.

Perhaps the journey was the reward.

Perhaps the violence was an inevitable consequence of the journey, an inevitable consequence of the human need to find redemption. How could they 'evolve' when each new birth started the journey anew? When the choice between good and evil wasn't the question, wasn't the crux of life. It was just the beginning to understanding.

Somehow humanity had lost sight of it's relationship to the cosmos. Of the interconnectedness of all things. And that in all the vastness of the universe, life was utterly precious, a gift worthy of worship in and of itself. It became so easy to hate when that relationship was lost, so easy for lost souls to destroy one another.

The Being drifted away from the pale blue planet, but he looked over his shoulder at all he had been there. As he traveled past glowing gas giants while looking at the Companion by his side, he felt a startling emptiness.

What did he feel here in the vastness of space-time? Immense? Limitless? How could Emptiness be Limitless when all was Connected?

What did he feel for this Companion? Love? Was there love in this relationship?

No. Not love. There was only Time.

How could he balance the prospect of Limitless eternity - but without love - against living what time was left in his human form - with love?

He looked back at the earth, at his recent past, and he felt confusion for the first time in his Limitless existence. His companion moved off in light, but he regarded the earth, regarded love as a fact of existence. Of his existence.

And he turned away from the receding light.

His chest was on fire, and he felt his son's arm around his chest, his grandson's squirming body against his chest, and he spit bitter salt water from his mouth. He saw Sarah on the boat coiling a line, then throwing a rope out to them. As the rope uncoiled in the air, as it arced toward them against a backdrop of infinite space, he regarded his choice. He looked up at his wife, saw the love in her eyes, and the love in his heart exploded back into his consciousness.

Here was home. Here, in the limitless vaults of time, in the hallowed recesses of a withering world, here love was found.

And here he would stay.